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Site Description

The Warra flux site is located in the Warra Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in south western Tasmania (GPS coordinates: -43.0950, 146.6545).

The 15,900 ha Warra LTER is partly contained within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (western section of the LTER), which is managed for conservation, and State forest which is managed for multipe-uses including wood production.

Timber harvesting on State forest within the LTER commenced in the 1970's.

Warra LTER is located between the Huon and Weld Rivers and rises to the Weld Range – a total elevational range of 50-1300 m. The flux site itself is situated on a small flat at an elevation of 100 m adjacent to the Huon River.

The climate of Warra classified as temperate with a mild summer and no dry season Mean annual precipitation is 1700 mm with a relatively uniform seasonal distribution.

Summer temperatures peak in January (min. 8.4°C – max 19.2°C) with winter temperatures reaching their lowest in July (min 2.6°C – max 8.4°C).

Eucalyptus obliqua forests dominate the vegetation below 650 m where they exist as fire-maintained communities. On fertile soils these forests attain mature heights in excess of 55m: the tallest E. obliqua within the LTER reaches a height of 90m.

The understorey vegetation progresses from wet sclerophyll (dominated by Pomaderris apatala and Acacia dealbata) to rainforest (dominated by Nothofagus cunninghamii, Atherosperma moschatum, Eucryphia lucida and Phyllocladus aspleniifolius) with increasing time intervals between fire events.

The flux tower is installed in a stand of tall, mixed-aged E. obliqua forest (77 and >250 years-old) with a rainforest understorey and a dense man-fern (Dicksonia antarctica) ground-layer.

The site supports prodigous quantities of coarse woody debris as is characteristic of these fire-maintained eucalypt forests on fertile sites in southern Tasmania.

The soil at the flux site is derived from Permian mudstone and has a gradational profile with a dark brown organic clayey silt topsoil overlying a yellow brown clay.

The instruments are mounted at the top of an 80m tall guyed steel lattice tower. Fluxes of heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide are measured using the open-path eddy flux technique.

Supplementary measurements above the canopy include temperature, humidity, windspeed, wind direction, rainfall, incoming and reflected shortwave radiation and net radiation.

Soil moisture content is measured using Time Domain reflectometry, while soil heat fluxes and temperature are also measured.